Wrestling With Racism
I make no bones about it: I love pro wrestling. I've loved it since I was a little kid, cheering for Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka and Hulk Hogan and Bruno Samartino. I remember when Hulk Hogan body-slammed the 7-foot, 500-pound Andre The Giant and it was all classmates talked about in my 5th grade class for days. Ot's been everything from a sit-down-and-relax activity, to mindless escapism, an exercise in admiring technical skill and physical storytelling, and seeing a heel (wrestler-speak for "bad guy") I don't like get thwacked over the head with a foreign object.
But for all I like and enjoy about pro-wrestling today, there's a lot that makes me uncomfortable. There are pockets of racism that rear their ugly head, and that makes me disappointed as a fan.
A staple of pro-wrestling is the heel wrestler sauntering into the ring and doing typical bad guy things: boasting of his prowess, telling how tougher, stronger and more experienced he is than his the face (good guy), etcetera. These are, of course, done to get the crowd emotionally involved, to boo and jeer him (called "getting heat"). If you're a good heel, you'll think of creative or gripping ways to get the crowd to want to see the face fight you in a match.
There's also another type of heat, though, called "cheap heat", ways of getting the crowd to boo you that would work for ANYONE, bad guy or good guy. Insulting a a city's hometown celebrity, a city's home sports team, a city's sports team's bitter rivals, calling all the fans in attendance stupid... these are all obvious cheap heat tactics. They are also usually unnecessary for all but the desperate or untalented wrestler.
What follows is the first example I saw of racist cheap heat, around 2003. The promo in question start2 around 3:30. See, Tiple H has done some of the classic acts of a face wrestler turning into a heel wrestler: dressing and acting the opposite of how he used to (conservative business suits instead of jeans and T-shirts, acting smarmy arrogant instead of confidently arrogant). But he then goes a lot farther than he needed to, with a pretty racist promo by the hell Triple H, who is white, versus the face Booker T, who is black. It starts with some coded dog-whistle wording, as at the 4:20 mark, he tells Booker T to "dance for me". The audience starts chanting "asshole" at Triple H around the five minute mark. At 5:15, Triple H takes the line that was being towed, and then takes a flying leap right over it: he goes on to insult Booker T's "nappy hair" and "your 'suckas' ". :
There's a compilation clip embedded below that shows many, many other racist moments in WWE programming (it leads off with the intro for the wrestler Funaki who has been rebranded "Kung Fu Naki", cause, y'know, all Asians know Kung-Fu, or something), and is immediately followed by an ECW segment of black wrestler Shelton Benjamin mocking wrestler Yoshi Tatsu by talking in broken English, a stereotypical accent, cracking Godzilla jokes and "bowing".
As the announcer says at 1:36, "Shelton doesn't need to do this."
And really, heels DON'T need to do this. I can hear some people wail, "But of course the BAD GUY is going to be racist, it's a bad guy action to take!" But the writers don't need to do this. People are going to boo you ANYWAY if you're competent enough at being a good enough bad guy.
And for some characters, like Vincent McMahon ( the real-life owner of WWE who plays a heel character like evil executive owner "Vince McMahon"), you don't need to resort to racism to look like a bad guy, or a clueless bad guy because you've spent years establishing your character as nothing but a bad guy who's ruthless, arrogant, and usually fails when he tries to be "with it". So the clip at 4:53 where he tries to ingratiate himself to the face champion John Cena (who at the time had just released a rap album) with a "Keep it up, my n-----!" or the clip immediately following where he calls the wrestler Sabu a member of "Al-Qaeda " and upon seeing him says "I'm not in Texas, I'm in Afghanistan!" (when the gimmick for Sabu was merely that he was a risk-taking daredevil who wouldn't hesitate to try high-flying moves that could hurt him as long as it would hurt his opponent too) are also unnecessary-- audiences have been trained for YEARS that the McMahon character is an arrogant asshole, and there are plenty of ways to showcase that without resorting to stupid, racist bullshit.
Man, don't even get me started on the homophobia still shown on televised pro-wrestling on both the heel AND face side.
But for all I like and enjoy about pro-wrestling today, there's a lot that makes me uncomfortable. There are pockets of racism that rear their ugly head, and that makes me disappointed as a fan.
A staple of pro-wrestling is the heel wrestler sauntering into the ring and doing typical bad guy things: boasting of his prowess, telling how tougher, stronger and more experienced he is than his the face (good guy), etcetera. These are, of course, done to get the crowd emotionally involved, to boo and jeer him (called "getting heat"). If you're a good heel, you'll think of creative or gripping ways to get the crowd to want to see the face fight you in a match.
There's also another type of heat, though, called "cheap heat", ways of getting the crowd to boo you that would work for ANYONE, bad guy or good guy. Insulting a a city's hometown celebrity, a city's home sports team, a city's sports team's bitter rivals, calling all the fans in attendance stupid... these are all obvious cheap heat tactics. They are also usually unnecessary for all but the desperate or untalented wrestler.
What follows is the first example I saw of racist cheap heat, around 2003. The promo in question start2 around 3:30. See, Tiple H has done some of the classic acts of a face wrestler turning into a heel wrestler: dressing and acting the opposite of how he used to (conservative business suits instead of jeans and T-shirts, acting smarmy arrogant instead of confidently arrogant). But he then goes a lot farther than he needed to, with a pretty racist promo by the hell Triple H, who is white, versus the face Booker T, who is black. It starts with some coded dog-whistle wording, as at the 4:20 mark, he tells Booker T to "dance for me". The audience starts chanting "asshole" at Triple H around the five minute mark. At 5:15, Triple H takes the line that was being towed, and then takes a flying leap right over it: he goes on to insult Booker T's "nappy hair" and "your 'suckas' ". :
Click to viewThere's a compilation clip embedded below that shows many, many other racist moments in WWE programming (it leads off with the intro for the wrestler Funaki who has been rebranded "Kung Fu Naki", cause, y'know, all Asians know Kung-Fu, or something), and is immediately followed by an ECW segment of black wrestler Shelton Benjamin mocking wrestler Yoshi Tatsu by talking in broken English, a stereotypical accent, cracking Godzilla jokes and "bowing".
As the announcer says at 1:36, "Shelton doesn't need to do this."
And really, heels DON'T need to do this. I can hear some people wail, "But of course the BAD GUY is going to be racist, it's a bad guy action to take!" But the writers don't need to do this. People are going to boo you ANYWAY if you're competent enough at being a good enough bad guy.
And for some characters, like Vincent McMahon ( the real-life owner of WWE who plays a heel character like evil executive owner "Vince McMahon"), you don't need to resort to racism to look like a bad guy, or a clueless bad guy because you've spent years establishing your character as nothing but a bad guy who's ruthless, arrogant, and usually fails when he tries to be "with it". So the clip at 4:53 where he tries to ingratiate himself to the face champion John Cena (who at the time had just released a rap album) with a "Keep it up, my n-----!" or the clip immediately following where he calls the wrestler Sabu a member of "Al-Qaeda " and upon seeing him says "I'm not in Texas, I'm in Afghanistan!" (when the gimmick for Sabu was merely that he was a risk-taking daredevil who wouldn't hesitate to try high-flying moves that could hurt him as long as it would hurt his opponent too) are also unnecessary-- audiences have been trained for YEARS that the McMahon character is an arrogant asshole, and there are plenty of ways to showcase that without resorting to stupid, racist bullshit.
Man, don't even get me started on the homophobia still shown on televised pro-wrestling on both the heel AND face side.